Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Seeing the general had taken out the cigarette, an orderly brought him a match.

‘He did not even respond to me,’ the general’s words blended with the cigarette smoke, sounding indistinct.

The British envoy wanted to object but the general raised his hand as if to save him the trouble.

‘I’m appealing to all of you: accept my soldiers. The comrades will not spare anyone’s life,’ the general crushed the cigarette in a massive marble ashtray. ‘Not anyone’s. I shall take my leave.’

He walked slowly along the runner rug but stopped just short of the door.

‘Half a year ago, England prevented me from planting minefields in Odessa’s water zone. Why?’

He was standing, with his head lowered. He did not turn.

‘I do not know,’ said the British envoy.

‘Well, I do know. British transports are now exporting grain from there, purchased for nothing from the Bolsheviks. That grain is soaked in Russian peasants’ blood.’

The general returned to Perekop late that evening. The reconnaissance chief reported to him that the enemy had managed to move significant forces toward Perekop during the day. The general nodded. He already felt the Reds’ pace and expected their offensive in the morning.

The general gave the wake-up signal an hour before dawn. He did not announce formation after they played reveille. He ordered only that the fires be stoked to blazing.

‘Jump over the fires!’ the general shouted and his voice came back to him in the regiment commanders’ shouts, like a weak echo.

‘Jump over the fires!’ he shouted again in the quiet that had set in.

Several people hinted at slight movement then immediately dissolved into the overall motionlessness. The army had fallen into lethargy in an obvious way. The general rushed to the closest fire and began shaking those who were sitting there. One after the other they stood and looked at him with vacant, weepy eyes. Never before had he seen his army like this . The general was genuinely frightened for the first time in his life.

He tore around among the campfires, attempting to bring his army back to life. Pounded soldiers on the face and in the gut. Shouted that they would be slaughtered like pigs.

Larionov distributed a half-glass of vodka to each but it had only a sedative effect. He ordered that a march be played, but the musicians’ fingers would not move in the cold. He buried his face in his hands and disappeared into the commander-in-chief’s tent.

When the other generals approached him in the tent, he said, ‘This army has died. And will never rise from the dead.’

A distant thundering sounded as he spoke. The Red artillery was beginning to shell. The Reds shelled often but poorly. Their shells fell either in front of the fortifications or far behind them. The lack of clustering in their shelling showed the Red grenadiers’ complete failure. If there was anything the general needed to watch out for, it was only a rogue shell.

The general calmed down once the battle had begun. It was as if he had forgotten his momentary outburst: he led using calculations from the artillerymen, who had determined the direction for a counterstrike. Their only reliable reference point was the Reds’ heavy weaponry. Using that reference point to the fullest, the Red artillery was suppressed twenty minutes later.

In the quiet that set in, the general again walked along the fortifications and made certain that his order to repair them had been carried out. In some spots, they had dug out broken stakes. In their places they had installed intact ones that had just been brought from Armyansk. They had not bothered to remove the cut barbed wire: they just unwound new wire alongside it.

‘Everything is ready for hosting the comrades ,’ said the general.

The comrades did not make them wait. Their first wave arose in the distance as if it had coagulated out of drifting snow; it began nearing the line of defense. The Whites did not shoot. Nor did the Reds. They walked, stooped, like someone still incapable of straightening up early in the morning. On a cold, early morning by a putrid gulf. This is how they would have walked to the factory in their previous life. Their ashen sleep-deprived faces were already visible. (As before, nobody was shooting.) Some had pliers in their belts for cutting barbed wire; this gave the approaching men even more resemblance to a crowd of workmen. But they were not workmen.

Behind the first wave was a second and a third and a fourth after that… The general lost count. It seemed those waves were moving from the horizon itself. They were creeping in with the indifference of volcanic lava. With the indivisibility of a locust swarm. This was a solid, unified force. The revolutionary masses in their highest manifestation. They were being created somewhere in the depths of a large country and had been pressed forward, to this narrow isthmus. The general knew these masses were enough for ten White Armies and, in the end, would engulf both his barbed wire and his machine guns.

He felt the defenders’ gazes and their expectation of his command. He even seemed to think his troops had perked up a little, in light of the mortal danger. The machine gunners had already sat down by their Maxim guns. They were straightening the ammunition belts and stroking the barrels. There was no tension in their movements: on the contrary, there was something proprietary, and that irritated the general. He looked at his watch but could not figure out what time it was. That was not actually important anyway.

The machine guns could hit from two thousand paces and the Reds were already much closer. They were walking with an uncoordinated, hobbled gait, staring at the frozen grass. The soldiers were trying to deceive death, which had already taken up its position beyond the barriers. So as not to attract its attention, they were not looking it in the eye, just as one does not look into the eyes of the possessed. Death awaited the young and, thus, seemed insane to those soldiers. They saw it and deflected their gazes. The barrels of their rifles were half-lowered. They were not fighting, they were here for something else. They simply walked, bobbing on the hillocks. From north to south.

The general knew this wave was doomed. He wanted to give these soldiers an extra minute. Wanted to see them alive one last time. Could not look at them enough. Or enjoy, enough, observing their awkward forward motion. Their motion was a sign of life. Even their wooden strides and even the spasmodic waving of their arms differentiated life from death. That would be taken away from them in a minute. Replaced with the full repose that differentiates death from life.

Everything would happen upon his order. Several dozen waves destined for the passage from life to death were following behind the first. The speed of their passage depended on the speed of the shooting from his Maxim guns. Which were stilled in readiness. Everything would happen even without his order. These armies could no longer exist without one another.

The general feverishly tried to remember which side he was fighting on. He knew this was a useless trick of the consciousness and a withdrawal from another question—the most important one—but he just could not remember. Those around him watched with surprise crossing into alarm. The cavalry and infantry were watching. The artillerymen were watching. Only the wind could be heard.

‘Fire,’ whispered the general.

His command was just a cloud of steam. It contained no voice. The next second, though, machine guns hit the Reds’ forward waves. The artillery began working on the rear guard. It seemed strange to the general that these consequences could be reached with one brief word. That they had not even heard. That they had uttered to themselves. He saw how deftly the machine gunners handled the ammunition belts. How the servicemen brought crates of ammunition with a calm, almost ant-like, focus. Volley followed volley. It was not uplifting for him. There was no more joy of battle in him. He knew (volley) that he already had another army now. Or maybe (volley) it was he who was different. Maybe his own (volley) sense of devastation had spread to the army and the army had ceased to exist. Died.